Ervolino: One man's cacophony is another's Tchaikovsky

When I was a kid, a friend of the family told my mother that our house always smelled like apples.

I'm not sure why. At the time, I wasn't even aware that apples had a smell.

Last week, though, as I bit into a crisp (and noisy) Granny Smith, I found myself wondering: What did our house SOUND like?

We lived on one of the main streets running through Rosedale — a small neighborhood in the southeast corner of Queens that was primarily known for two things: it had an abundant mosquito population and it was situated in the flight path of Kennedy Airport.

So, in addition to the sounds of our television (which always seemed to be on) and our dishwasher (none of my other friends had one), I recall the sounds of cars driving by, lots of swatting and jets flying overhead.

The latter drove out-of-towners crazy.

"How can you live with that noise?" they'd ask, whenever another plane roared by.

"What noise?" I'd reply.

On summer nights, I also enjoyed the sound of kids playing in the street around the corner. And crickets — a perky tribe of which lived behind our shed.

Forty years later, when I bought my house in Wood-Ridge, I was concerned that my little dead end street might be too quiet.

No kids. No through-traffic. But on my first afternoon there, as I was sitting outside on my deck, a plane heading toward Newark Airport flew overhead. Moments later, another plane, coming into Teterboro Airport (about half a mile from my house) flew by, too.

And, yes, I found them strangely comforting.

As much as I appreciate "The Sounds of Silence" — the song and the real thing — peace and quiet can drive you crazy after a while.

Besides, as I was reminded last week, one man's cacophony is another man's Tchaikovsky.

This epiphany occurred to me on Tuesday, when I was perusing The Record's website and read that our cheeky cicada population was about to "emerge from the soil."

According to some reports, an estimated billion or so of the little devils are due any minute now, in a backyard near you.

Some cicada species do this every 13 years. Ours are the every-17-year variety. And they're not the strong, silent type.

As you may already know, the males have these little noisemakers around the base of their abdomens that announce to the world that they're in the mood for love.

Lots of love.

And the ensuing (seemingly endless) weeks of loud, love-drunk debauchery make even the most staid neighborhoods sound like a two-month-long "Jersey Shore" marathon.

Their love song is loud enough to cause permanent hearing loss in humans. Still, on YouTube (where you can see and hear them in action) I saw all sorts of comments from people who said they found the noise "soothing."